THE ALASKA BOUNDARY LINE.
It has been said that but for the Hudson's Bay Company British Columbia would not have been preserved to the British Crown. On the Imperial frontier to the far north and west the Company early established its posts, and vigorously sought to maintain them against, first, Russian, and afterwards American, aggression.
Sketch Map of South-East Alaska (showing points in controversy).
(By permission of Messrs. Houghton, Mifflin & Co., publishers of the "Atlantic Monthly.")
The American purchase of Alaska from Russia in 1867 included a strip of the coast (lisière de côté) extending from north latitude 54° 40' to the region of Mt. St. Elias. It was generally understood that this strip was separated from the British possessions by a mountain range (then believed to exist) parallel to the coast, as in event of this range being too remote, by a line parallel to the windings (sinuosities) of the coast, nowhere greater than ten marine leagues from the same.
There is nothing to lead one to suppose that the strip of coast was designed to be continuous from the parallel of 54° 40' north latitude. The recent great development of the North-West has shown the singular value of this strip, which the American authorities, ignoring the exact possessions of the Anglo-Russian treaty of 1825, has assumed to be their territory. Recent American writers have been quick to perceive the weakness of their case, and one of these, writing in the Atlantic Monthly, uses this language:
"Arbitration is compromise.... Once before a board of arbitration, the English Government has only to set up and vigorously urge all its claims, and more that can easily be invented, and it is all but absolutely certain that although by tradition and equity we should decline to yield a foot of what we purchased in good faith from Russia, and which has become doubly valuable to us by settlement and exploration, our lisière will be promptly broken into fragments, and with much show of impartiality divided between the two contracting parties." The italics are mine. Tradition and (the American idea of) equity are hardly equal to the language of a treaty negotiated so recently as 1825.[130]
Convention with Russia.
His Majesty the King of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, and his Majesty the Emperor of all the Russias, being desirous of drawing still closer the ties of good understanding and friendship which unite them, by means of an agreement which may settle, upon the basis of reciprocal convenience, different points connected with the commerce, navigation, and fisheries of their subjects on the Pacific Ocean, as well as the limits of their respective possessions on the north-west coast of America, have named plenipotentiaries to conclude a convention for this purpose, that is to say—His Majesty the King of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, the Right Hon. Stratford Canning, a member of his said Majesty's Most Hon. Privy Council, etc.; and his Majesty the Emperor of all the Russias, the Sieur Charles Robert Count de Nesselrode, his Imperial Majesty's Privy Councillor, a member of the Council of the Empire, Secretary of State for the Department of Foreign Affairs, etc., and the Sieur Pierre de Poletica, his Imperial Majesty's Councillor of State, etc.; who, after having communicated to each other their respective full powers, found in good and due form, have agreed upon and signed the following articles:—